Over-The-Air live local TV app Tablo released for Fire TV devices

An official Tablo app for the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick has just been released. If you’re not familiar with Tablo, it allows you to stream and record free Over-The-Air (OTA) HD channels to any number of Android and iOS devices, which now includes the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. You simply connect their 2-Tuner or 4-Tuner DVR to your home network and any HDTV Antenna. Similar to how Slingbox allows you to stream your cable subscription to your Fire TVs and other devices, Tablo allows you to do the same with your locally broadcasted networks like NBC, CBS, ABC, and more. Services like Sling TV have said from the beginning that they won’t be including local channels in their service lineup because there will always be better and cheaper ways to view such channels than with a monthly subscription. Tablo is one of those ways and, with the release of this new app, is the best way to view free local channels on a Fire TV or Fire TV Stick.

You will still need to have a tuner somewhere in the mix to display Over-The-Air HD channels on a streaming player. Either something like an HDHomerun or a TV tuner card in a PC. You could use a media player like Emby to stream the live TV to your device: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki/Live%20TV

Otherwise you’ll need to pay for a service like Sling TV that streams the live channels to your player over the Internet.

HDHomerun has an app to watch live TV, but you need one of their network tuner boxes. ~$100

You can get one that will do over the air signals, or one that takes a CableCARD that will let you watch all of your cable channels.

with just those two devices, there won’t be any DVR/pause-live-tv functionality, but you can watch from any FireTV on your network. You can add another box and set it up as a whole house DVR if you like.

I’ve been using Tablo for several months now… it’s great, especially now with the FTV app (which I also beta-tested). Only things missing from Tablo are: (1) official app to download recorded shows to computer (there’s an unofficial script, but requires you to use command line), and (2) 5.1 audio support (for now, everything is re-encoded to AAC 2.0).